‘Do you mix much within the Chinese community here in Lynn, Mr Zhao?’ asked Shaw, aware that the question was as subtle as the Daddies Sauce. There were two
It was pretty clear which one Shaw meant.
‘We live here, on the Westmead,’ said Zhao. ‘My wife was born here. I mix with my own community.’
‘Staff?’ asked Valentine.
‘Three.’
‘Also Chinese?’
Mr Zhao cleaned his already spotless fingers on his white apron.
Shaw stepped in. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d give DS Valentine the details. Names, addresses. I’m sorry, we’ll need to see their papers too. And one more formality… A driving licence?’
Zhao raised both hands, palms up, as if nothing would be easier, but Shaw detected for the first time the hard, angry set of the man’s jaw.
‘A moment,’ he said, opening a door into a corridor, then closing it gently behind him. They heard his footsteps on carpeted stairs, then the creak of floorboards above. The door Zhao had closed swung back again and through the opening they heard drawers being pulled out, banged shut. Shaw walked quickly into the corridor beyond. To the left the stairs rose, boxes on each step. To the right the corridor led to a door, half open. He looked in: a
Valentine stood behind him and tried the other door in the corridor. It opened and they stood together looking in. A child’s bedroom: bright yellow wallpaper dotted with Looney Tunes characters – Daffy Duck, Road Runner. A cot rested in pieces up against one wall. A mobile hung, ships, fishes and lighthouses in wood. Shaw wondered if the child had an inflatable raft for the beach.
But perhaps a child didn’t live there. A single metal collapsible bed was made up with grey blankets. On the coverlet a magazine. Porn: Das Fleisch. Sean Harper, plumber’s mate, would approve. Three copies, all different dates.
They heard footsteps too late and met Zhao in the corridor.
‘The door was open – we wondered where you were,’ said Valentine, taking a laboured breath. ‘Whose room?’ he asked, making a virtue out of being caught.
‘Gangsun. My nephew,’ said Zhao, closing the door and forcing Valentine to step back. ‘He works the late shift at weekends and sometimes he sleeps, goes home next day.’
‘Likes reading, does he?’ asked Valentine, a sneer disfiguring his face.
‘Young man – lonely, I think. A wife in Kowloon.’ Shaw made a cursory examination of Zhao’s driving licence. They heard a key turn in the front door and a man joined them: Chinese, swollen eyes, twenty years of
‘And him?’ said Valentine, nodding at the other man. ‘My brother,’ said Zhao. ‘We open at noon; Edison cooks.’
‘You’ll tell him what we need. Papers, passport, driving licence,’ said Valentine, making it clear it wasn’t a question.
‘Of course.’
‘We interviewed the Round Table secretary this morning, Mr Zhao,’ said Shaw. ‘He said the takeaway meal has been a standing order for – what – eighteen months?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Mr Beddard – I’m right with the name? He said the order was for six o’clock.’
Zhao was aware now that he was being led somewhere he might regret going.
‘So you would have been early – twenty minutes or more.’
‘The insulated boxes keep the food OK,’ he said, too quickly. ‘Sometimes I get places early, take a break in the van. Smoke. My vice.’
He seemed very keen to own up to an everyday vice, thought Shaw. He tried to imagine it, the takeaway van parked outside Burnham Overy Staithe Village Hall, engine running, Mr Zhao enjoying a well‐earned cigarette, light spilling out on to the snow.
‘Mr Beddard says you’re often late,’ said Shaw.
‘In winter, people eat early. I drop off three or four times, it gets late.’
‘And Edison stays here cooking – with the others?’
‘Yes.’
‘So who’s the other man? Mr Beddard says that a couple of times you’ve been with a friend. Always – almost always – he said that was when you were late.’
‘Sometimes Edison is bored – he comes for the ride,’ he said, his voice slightly louder.
‘But in winter people eat early – so it must be too busy for Edison to leave the kitchen, right?’
Zhao cracked the window open. ‘Like your job, take‐away food, Inspector,’ he said, and Shaw sensed the syntax had been deliberately muddled to help blur the clarity of the answer. ‘Never know when busy.’ He shrugged. ‘Not busy.’
‘Mr Beddard says the other man – your friend – is not Chinese, Mr Zhao.’
Zhao rubbed his face, then drew two circles in the air. ‘Mr Beddard’s eyes are not good. Always someone else signs for the food; he can find never his glasses. Who knows what he sees?’
Shaw caught Valentine’s eye. Enough, for now. But they’d be back. ‘Let’s make a start, DS Valentine, please. Names, addresses, any papers to hand.’
He turned to Zhao and tried out his most in sincere smile. He didn’t like it when people lied to him, especially when they didn’t seem to care if he knew.
Dr Kazimierz answered her mobile on the first ring.
‘Sorry, Justina, it’s me. Anything I should know?’
‘It’s early,’ she said, but the icy formality was short of full blast. ‘The chisel had a nine‐inch blade – the point actually fractured the inside of the skull at the back of the head. Blood group’s AB – which helps, yes? Bad news – Tom says no prints on the weapon.’
Shaw thought about the blood group. It was a break. AB covered just four people in a hundred. He heard a tap being turned, water gushing.
‘And there was a tattoo on the chest: Royal Anglians. Otherwise that’s it for now.’
‘So, a soldier once?’
Silence. Shaw heard the sound of coffee now, a filter machine chugging.
Shaw rang Tom Hadden in the CSI unit office. Hadden didn’t like being indoors, under the artificial lights which made him look so pale, and Shaw imagined him working briskly through the paperwork so he could get back out to the scene at Ingol Beach.
‘Couple of things,’ he said, and Shaw heard the metal locks on his forensic briefcase snap shut. ‘The Morris Minor 1000.’
‘The old biddy’s?’
‘Yeah. Marijuana.’
‘Pardon?’
‘George asked me to look in the glove compartment. Brown, Moroccan, top quality. Must have blown her pension on it. She’d got a pouch stuffed with it – but there were fibres all over the floor. A regular little pot‐head, in fact.’
‘Two favours,’ said Shaw, beginning to shuffle the limpet shells he’d arranged in a line on the dashboard. ‘Can you check the plugs in the Vauxhall Rascal – the ones in the engine as well as the ones in the door pocket. And can you take a dental mould from the apple on the dashboard – check it’s Ellis’s lunch.’
‘That’s a long shot,’ said Hadden, aware of Shaw’s reputation for painstaking police work. A visual assessment of the apple against Ellis’s teeth had looked like a good match. Dental matches took time, cost money. They’d have to put the work out to the Forensic Science Service. ‘OK,’ he said.
Shaw looked up and saw Valentine splashing out of
‘And the man on the beach?’ asked Shaw, as Valentine stretched the seatbelt, fired the ignition, listened to the engine race, then die.
‘There are some documents but I’ve got them in the dry heater – give me an hour…’
‘Passport?’
‘An hour,’ he said. ‘We got a hat – black wool. It could be his. Washed up about five hundred yards to the northwest. No name tag, but there are hairs. We can get a match if they’re his. Nothing else on the high‐water mark except the drum of chemicals – that’s gone back to the yard at St James’s They’ll get us a fix on the contents, but if you want to trust my nose I’d say sulphuric acid. When we got the lid off it smelt like a thousand rotten eggs with a gangrene sauce.’